Amazon's New Refunds Policy Will 'Crush' Small Businesses, Outraged Sellers Say (cnbc.com) 335
Amazon sellers are up in arms over a new returns policy that will make it easier for consumers to send back items at the merchant's expense. From a report: Marketplace sellers who ship products from their home, garage or warehouse -- rather than using Amazon's facilities -- were told this week by email that starting Oct. 2, items they sell will be "automatically authorized" for return. That means a buyer will no longer need to contact the seller before sending an item back, and the merchant won't have the opportunity to communicate with the customer. If a consumer is returning an electronic device because it's difficult to use, for example, the seller won't be able to offer help before being forced to pay a refund. "Customers will be able to print a prepaid return shipping label via the Online Return Center instantly," the email said. Additionally, Amazon said that it's introducing "returnless refunds," a feature that the company said is "highly requested by sellers." The change enables sellers to offer a refund without taking back an item that may be expensive to ship and hard to resell.
SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME BOB (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazon isn't in the retail business. Amazon isn't in the cloud computing business. Amazon isn't in the logistics business. Amazon is in the business business. It is no longer The Everything Store; it is now the Everything Everything. It wants to be the platform around which all of the world's businesses depend.
This is about as ambitious a mission as a company has ever launched, in my opinion -- and Amazon may be the first company with a justifiable claim to such ambition. Its only business constraints at this point are geopolitical, really. I believe it aims even higher in the long run: it is aiming to become the macroeconomic backbone of at least the Western world.
When viewed in that context, traditional definitions of monopoly -- especially the most widely known definition of the state, which is based on market share within a specific industry -- almost feel antiquated. Jeff Bezos isn't JP Morgan; he's freaking Cohaagen from Total Recall.
(To be very clear, I say all of this in admiration of Jeff Bezos, not in fear or criticism of him.)
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Amazon isn't in the retail business. Amazon isn't in the cloud computing business. Amazon isn't in the logistics business. Amazon is in the business business. It is no longer The Everything Store; it is now the Everything Everything. It wants to be the platform around which all of the world's businesses depend.
This is about as ambitious a mission as a company has ever launched, in my opinion -- and Amazon may be the first company with a justifiable claim to such ambition.
Uh, a justifiable claim? Yeah right. There is no justification to annihilate the concept of competition by becoming the global proxy for "Everything". There isn't a justifiable need for it either.
First rule of logistics; Don't become dependent on a single source provider.
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becoming the global proxy for "Everything".
Do you realize that Amazon is the world's second biggest e-commerce company [alibaba.com]?
It is silly to label them a monopoly when they aren't even the market leader.
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I think the claim is that Amazon is trying to get in to many more spaces that e-commerce. They are a major e-commerce player, but they are also trying to get in to many other areas as well.
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Do you realize that Amazon is the world's second biggest e-commerce company?
Different market. I don't want to have to deal with getting a quote or contacting a vendor to tell him what I want, I want to click on the "buy" button and buy it. Amazon does the latter. Alibaba, from every experience I've had with them, is the former.
Yes, if I want to buy 10,000 widgets and need to find a Chinese manufacturer, Alibaba is where I'd go. If I want to buy one I'll go to Amazon. As soon as I see the "price" listed as "Get Quote", I know I'm spending too much time. And then there's the "price"
Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you realize that Amazon is the world's second biggest e-commerce company?
Different market. I don't want to have to deal with getting a quote or contacting a vendor to tell him what I want, I want to click on the "buy" button and buy it. Amazon does the latter. Alibaba, from every experience I've had with them, is the former.
www.aliexpress.com
In fact, Amazon's new policy is a direct result of Alibaba. People buy a bunch of shit wholesale from Alibaba and relist it on Amazon with huge markups. They "seller" on Amazon often never sees the product. They drop ship it straight to the customer who buys it off of Amazon.
Amazon's new policy is a FUCK YOU to those "sellers". If Amazon doesn't touch the inventory then they assume it's drop shipped, and will let customers get instant refunds, no questions asked. This will quickly be abused.
Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B (Score:5, Insightful)
becoming the global proxy for "Everything".
Do you realize that Amazon is the world's second biggest e-commerce company [alibaba.com]?
It is silly to label them a monopoly when they aren't even the market leader.
FFS, first or second place hardly matters when there are only two fucking players left. This isn't about "leaders". This is about destroying the market altogether. You can't point at the other monopoly to dismiss or justify the existence of the arrogant and soul-crushing behavior of market domination. It's become a pathetic joke to even have anti-monopoly laws on the books anymore. At this rate, the world will be reduced to a dozen mega-corps within the next decade or two, with Amazon being the "Everything Everything" proxy. The middle class will dissolve away just as the concept of competition will. In the end, there will only be the 0.0001%, and the rest of the enslaved planet.
There are many dangerous addictions, but Greed is the one that will ultimately lead to our demise.
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It's not automation in general you need to worry about, it's killbots specifically. All is not lost until a practical autonomous killbot is developed. Then we enter the Oppression Singularity, leading quickly to widespread killbot-powered genocide. This is much closer to completion and more immediately dangerous than the disembodied AI with superhuman intelligence that some people keep harping on about.
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People can't understand that wooden shipping pallets are equivalent to automation because they're trying to imagine a block of wood versus Bender, instead of looking at what exactly happened with literally every step of technical progress in history.
You don't have to worry about automation or any other form of technical progress; you need to worry about when the steps of progress start to run faster than your economy can keep up. Progress replaces jobs with fewer jobs, causing changes of employment (so
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Justifiable in this context doesn't speak to the morality of the ambition, only that the ambition is believable. It may be a bad idea, but Amazon can justifiably be claimed to be trying to do it.
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Justifiable in this context doesn't speak to the morality of the ambition, only that the ambition is believable. It may be a bad idea, but Amazon can justifiably be claimed to be trying to do it.
I think I'm rather justified in saying that corporate training related to morals and ethics shouldn't be mandated anymore when it clearly has fuck-all to do with business anymore.
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> (To be very clear, I say all of this in admiration of Jeff Bezos, not in fear or criticism of him.)
His goons are standing right behind you with a knife, aren't they?
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Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon (Score:5, Informative)
After my return experience with NewEgg where I bought a defective gaming motherboard and took three days of back and forth emails with tech support before finally having to pay for my own return shipping I switched to Amazon. Yes, I'll pay $5 more for that motherboard, but it takes 30 seconds to return it and the replacement will arrive in 24 hours.
Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon (Score:5, Insightful)
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Much agreed, I too go to NewEgg's search first and salute their anti patent troll actions.
And then after I find what I want to go buy it on Amazon.com.
Sure, some see that as a dick move. But I look at places like BestBuy who have not only acknowledged that people do that, but embraced it: BestBuy is now more of a "show room" where they make a large chunk of their money simply renting the demo space to products, knowing full well most folks will actually buy online. They don't care, they don't need to, the
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"i havent gotten anything from them in a while but its always been painless for me. "
For me too. I'm living in the EU and we can return _anything_ for any reason or no reason at all, if bought online.
It's the law.
The return label is included and I can put it in any delivery box nearest to me and the post-office will pick it up there.
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Things like monitors, headphones, webcams, mice, keyboards, hard and thumb drives,
On top of that, it is a fact that some retailers make sure higher quality items are on the shelves precisely because of their return policy. A busines
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Your local stores may have good return policies, but I'd argue that they are "friendlier" than this Amazon policy. You quite literally don't have to talk to anyone to do the return, depending on the postal situation in your neighbourhood you might not even have to put on pants.
I'm not saying your local stores aren't doing things well, but I don't think you can claim that they are necessarily superior to this
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Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon (Score:4, Insightful)
You also have to go there, shop during their specified business hours, deal with their significantly smaller selection, wait in lines, transport your purchase home afterwards, etc. All told, what took 5 minutes of your time to do online, takes over an hour of your time to do at a physical store.
Online shopping is far more convenient than brick and mortar, offers a larger selection, and generally at lower prices.
Of course, if you're an "instant gratification" type who can't wait 2 days for shipping, then I guess you can keep shopping at the local mall until it finally goes out of business, but keep in mind that the fewer people like you who are willing to do it, the higher their prices are going to have to rise to compensate for it.
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Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon (Score:4, Insightful)
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You should also be happy that you're supporting your neighbors and your community.
Why shouldn't you be happy that you're supporting the community of wherever the Amazon shipping warehouse is? What is it about the place you live that makes it more deserving of support than somewhere else?
The obvious answer is "because I live there", but, is that really an answer? Is this just the modern form of tribalism, or is there really some actual value in supporting people who live near you rather than people who live far away.
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So basically you're ok with paying $5 more per item for hassle-free returns.
Newegg Premier [newegg.com] is just $50/yr. It gives you expedited shipping, free returns for any reason (Amazon charges you return shipping if there's nothing wrong with the item), no restocking fee, and your friends and family can use your membership as well. By your metric, if you and your friends/family could potentially buy more than 10 items per year from Newegg, this is a better deal than Am
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I suspect it was a third party seller. A-Z Returns apply to any items fulfilled by Amazon, but not to 3rd party sellers. That is what is changing.
GTFO (Score:2, Informative)
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Go where? Amazon nuked the competition. It's the same reason most orgs still have Microsoft desktops despite MS sucking rotting eggs forward and backward. Your poop has to be crevice-for-crevice compatible with the shape of everyone else's MS-Anus if you want to pass goods and services instead of be constipated.
Competition is good, now lets get some.
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Re:GTFO (Score:4, Informative)
ebay is still a big place to sell your products.
As a consumer, I, and many other people, won't touch e-bay with a 10ft pole. Jet on the otherhand, if it had better variety, like maybe even 1/3 of what Amazon has, would be an excellent place to shop.
Re:GTFO (Score:5, Informative)
yes, and you know why we, as consumers, won't touch e-bay? precisely because it's a haven for these exact sellers who don't care about their customers.
If you won't stand behind your product, e-bay is the perfect place to sell, as the buyers there expect that level (or lack of) support.
If you DO stand behind your product, than continue to sell on Amazon, this change won't affect you.
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I don't know where you guys get this shit from.
As someone who operated a small ebay business and still sells on ebay, I can assure you that the game is always configured in the buyer's favor. It is beyond easy for buyers to get away with all sorts of return scams and arbitrary complaining.
I have never and will never have an experience in my life where I receive something from eBay or Amazon that wasn't as expected and I am not able to reconcile it. On the contrary, my biggest fear as a seller is that a bu
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"There are far more places to buy things than to sell things."
Your logic is rather broken. The only places to buy things are the places selling things in the first place!
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ebay is still a big place to sell your products.
As a consumer, I, and many other people, won't touch e-bay with a 10ft pole. Jet on the otherhand, if it had better variety, like maybe even 1/3 of what Amazon has, would be an excellent place to shop.
Don't "worry", pretty soon Jet will be just like Walmart (since they bought Jet)... They are phasing out Kirkland brands for Sam's products and are adding some Walmart to boost their variety, but I suspect the end goal is to close Jet (kind of like Amazon killed Quidsi).
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As a consumer, ebay is great though? The sellers are scared shitless of getting anything other than 5-star reviews and will bend over backwards to secure a good rating.
Re: GTFO (Score:2)
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Go where? Amazon nuked the competition.
Nonsense. Besides eBay, anyone is free to spin up their own storefront, and handle their own advertising. If their business is small enough to where advertising is arduous they'd probably be better off working niche markets anyway.
Re:GTFO (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon's competition nuked themselves with their inadequacy. All Amazon did was spot the weaknesses (which were pretty obvious) and exploit them.
Re:GTFO (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazon's competition nuked themselves with their inadequacy. All Amazon did was spot the weaknesses (which were pretty obvious) and exploit them.
No, what Amazon did was figure out that they didn't need to make profit so long as they kept investing in new technology that they could maybe sell eventually. They now make so much money on cloud computing and related services that they don't give a crap about profit in their retail side. They are walmarting the entire retail business model safe in the knowledge that everyone else is going to go broke long before they do trying to compete.
People who have never worked in a small retail business don't understand the business model. You don't "compete" with lower prices, that's just a race to the bottom with everyone dying a slow death. Including the manufacturers who now have a thoroughly devalued product that they can't wholesale.
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That doesn't mean the same at all.
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Go where?
Are you serious? There are a zillion alternatives. That most of them are crap isn't Amazon's fault. For starters, there is eBay. There is also plenty of niche vendors for particular products. You can also set up your own website.
So why is it hard to sell through these other sites? Because they have a reputation for slow shipping and crappy return policies ... so it is hypocritical to want to use Amazon's reputation while complaining about their easy returns.
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Go where? Amazon nuked the competition. It's the same reason most orgs still have Microsoft desktops despite MS sucking rotting eggs forward and backward. Your poop has to be crevice-for-crevice compatible with the shape of everyone else's MS-Anus if you want to pass goods and services instead of be constipated.
Competition is good, now lets get some.
Walmart or eBay for starters. Yes, Walmart also has 3rd party sellers. Or Sears (also has 3rd party sellers).
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Yes, ideally these businesses could just go elsewhere and thrive... but if we're pragmatic this is a very difficult thing to succeed at. This will decimate the amount of competition because many of them will fail on their own.
The problem is that Amazon has more or less locked in a large market of people who don't shop around, enjoy their Prime shipping, and are afraid of putting their credit card into a random business's site.
The idealist in me agrees with you, but I don't feel idealism is the correct appro
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Ideally these businesses would not "thrive" elsewhere, ideally they'd go out of business altogether.
Keep in mind that the businesses are complaining because Amazon is mandating that they stand behind their product. If you aren't willing to stand behind what you sell, and Amazon won't do business with you because of that, I have no sympathy.
Re:GTFO (Score:5, Insightful)
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And in physical stores this has been the case for eons. They just deal with it. Sure, it sucks, but the alternative is blocking legitimate refunds and not standing behind your product. I'm happy Amazon is standing up for their customers here.
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When people try to return it you examine it. Some don't even have the decency to dry clean the clothes which smell like perfume, smoke and body odor; others don't empty their pockets (condoms, receipts). And then some of these guys start screaming that the clothes aren't returnable. Police are called. They look at the clothes an
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Meanwhile, ALL the major stores that are left just accept everything back. Sure it sucks, but the alternative is blocking legitimate returns. I'm glad Amazon is standing up for their customers here.
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Oh, believe me, we are. Amazon is a shit show all around for 3rd party sellers. It just takes awhile to sink in.
Upfront, you see them steal 15%-20% of every sale.
Then your first order comes in. They've reset the weight of everything you sell. Feathers or bowling balls, doesn't matter, catalog says 1lb. Shipping is a flat $4.49 so they helpfully select a customer in the state farthest from you. As if that's not enough, then they dip their snouts into that too so you only get $4.
Then, if you signed up f
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Have you ever sold items online? Most customers are fine but there is small percentage that are idiots, scammers, assholes or all three rolled into one. None of these proposed changes are going to make selling items online any easier or more profitable. No, they'll just make sure some sellers decide that the scales have now tipped to the point where it's not worth the bullshit with Amazon reaching into their pockets on behalf of that small subset and making the whole enterprise unprofitable.
And their "re
Those businesses exist because of Amazon (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Those businesses exist because of Amazon (Score:5, Funny)
and if you need, Amazon sells swords also!
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Sword now covered in blood, DNA, and fingerprints. Request return to overseas seller.
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and if you need, Amazon sells swords also!
Hello, "amazon seller not wanting returns #4227"!
Item "death by the sword brand sword" is frequently bought together with the following items:
https://www.amazon.com/Miniature-Violin-Small-4-inches/dp/B00075PSBY/ [amazon.com]
Include 1-year accident protection for $1.99!
Get this item by tomorrow with Amazon Prime!
This is law in some places (Score:2, Informative)
Like in the Netherlands where sellers are required to take anything sold online back in 14 days no questions asked and refunds include shipping cost (to get the product to there customer, not back to the seller)
Re:This is law in some places (Score:5, Informative)
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Oregon, and many other US States, have the same 14 day refund period for most items. There are exclusions.
The thing is, I'm not buying any of it in Oregon. I don't know if when you buy from Amazon, where you legally make the purchase. But when I buy, I'm buying stuff from Washington State, where Amazon is.
Generally, to get local protections you have to buy it from a local retailer. When people talk about Amazon being bad for local retailers, now you know one of the reasons why that matters to some people.
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IANAL, but it seems to me that if they have a presence in your state, then it ought to be treated as a local purchase. That's how collecting sales taxes works.
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Right, but the actual word is "nexus," and "presence" is just how the media describes it. It means having stores or major offices in most cases.
Also, the rules isn't that you have to collect taxes for sales in a State if you have a nexus there. It is actually at the other end; the State is not allowed to demand that you collect the tax unless you have a nexus there. If there is a requirement, it is up to local State law to say so. Not all States bother, and they don't have the same rules for what is a "nexu
"offer help before being forced to pay a refund" (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine the tragedy of a world where a seller is liable for making the products they sell actually useful out of the box rather than forcing customers to go down a "support" rabbit hole before they give up.
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Imagine the tragedy of a world where a seller is liable for making the products they sell actually useful out of the box rather than forcing customers to go down a "support" rabbit hole before they give up.
The seller is a middle-man. Generally they are neither the manufacturer, nor trained in how to support the products they sell. They also do not necessarily have the expertise to evaluate every product before deciding to sell it to see if it is going to be "easy enough" for the customer to make them happy. The ones that do will have to recoup that cost in some way, normally through a after-sale paid support service or higher initial prices.
People need to stop being babies and make up their minds what they wa
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making the products they sell actually useful out of the box
Have you ever actually worked with the public before? People are idiots. I've worked in a retail environment for a number of years, and a consumer electronics repair shop for a couple years. The level of stupidity achieved by the general population would make your head spin. When I sold and serviced remote car starters it would be at least a weekly experience explaining to a customer that there was a battery in the remote that needed to be replaced. Not to mention the call where we had to instruct the c
Amazon grew on the backs of these merchants... (Score:3)
Living under monopoly. (Score:3)
It's no secret that Jeff Bezos' first, second and third objectives are to please Amazon customers, giving them more stuff at the lowest prices and at faster speeds. But increasingly, those upgrades come at the expense of sellers, who often build their businesses on Amazon and have few other places to generate revenue.
The sellers put all their eggs in one basket. Now they are paying the price. Amazon customers too must remember this. Once the brick and mortar competition is driven to bankruptcy it will be their turn to pay the piper.
Sellers will have to factor that into their costs (Score:3)
They're glorified flea markets (Score:3)
eBay, Amazon Marketplace, etc. have more in common with a flea market than a big box retailer. This shows a wildly idiotic misunderstanding of what they really are:
I am with the sellers here. Totally inappropriate to go the marketplace route (which is often cheaper) and expect the benefits of paying more from Amazon.
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I doubt your average shopper knows who they are buying from. Unless you pay attention to the "ships from and sold by" text, it can often look like just another purchase - you don't need to be clicking on the "other sellers" text to be buying from the marketplace.
Indeed Amazon will even target customers with email ads for products that are exclusively sold by third party merchants. So you get an email from Amazon advertising a product, you click the link in the email and make a purchase on Amazon.com - it's
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A hard drive manufacturer notices that the last 50000 drives coming off the line are having issues... either via their QC or from feedback from merchants... well then now thats a batch headed exclusively to the retailers that negotiated the lowest wholesale prices.
A retailer like Walmart doesnt care that the item is of lower quality than is typical because people returning items is part of their business model of getting people back into the store to buy more stuff. Think about it... if you are
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Of course, if you explicitly make the effort to look, you notice it's marketplace. People who aren't paying close attention end up not seeing the difference (well, until shipping comes up).
Chinese sellers VS eBay and others (Score:3, Informative)
This seems to be a big issue with overseas sellers - I point to China because they're the most common - and shipping. My $5-20 item may come with free shipping, but when it arrives and is broken or turns out to be a fake piece of crap, the return cost may end up being more than the value of the item (especially if I want it tracked and within a reasonable time period).
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This seems to be a big issue with overseas sellers - I point to China because they're the most common - and shipping. My $5-20 item may come with free shipping, but when it arrives and is broken or turns out to be a fake piece of crap, the return cost may end up being more than the value of the item (especially if I want it tracked and within a reasonable time period).
If it's bought and shipped across the world for $5 my expectations are very low, like a cheap piece of plastic knock-off and not a solid or brand anything. Either the seller will send me another if it's clearly defective or I'll give a bad review and write it off. I only buy from sellers with high 99.x% rating so they care about that, the reminder I expect is mainly the factory/shipping fail rate. For the savings I just figure a few bum deals are worth it and the ratings seem to get crap products off the ma
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I ordered a $3 vga cable. It simply didn't work as advertised. Asked for refund and they wanted it shipped back with tracking number at my expense. Which would have been (from Canada) about six times the expected refund.
My review of the product went into great detail on why I was giving it one star.
It will crush them (Score:5, Informative)
But hey, who needs profit, right? Just keep selling things below cost, and eventually, you'll make a profit, right?
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Taking the same percentage of the shipping is standard business practice, eBay also does it and import duty works the same way too - else everybody would sell everything for $1 and charge the rest as "shipping fee".
This could go wrong (Score:3)
This sounds great to me as a buyer. But consider:
1) Company A buys tons of products from a competitor
2) Company A returns them all at competitor's expense
3) Bye-bye competitor
"Returnless Refunds" (Score:2)
Idiot Protection (Score:2)
YAY! Finally, a way to abuse my competitors... (Score:2)
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i'm thinking it has to be something big like a fridge or some other appliance
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Re: Returnless Refund? (Score:2)
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i'm thinking it has to be something big like a fridge or some other appliance.
I got it for a defective tea kettle, so it doesn't have to be that big.
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It already works almost the same way; current system is, buyer requests return, seller says no, buyer makes complaint to Amazon, refund approved and the customer is stuck recycling the junk item.
I'd actually rather force them to accept the returned item, but this is at least some sort of progress.
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Yup, though I don't mind if the seller asks for proof it's been destroyed. Happened to me with a defective cable - not on Amazon though, cut it in two and they had no problem sending a replacement.
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I've seen this happen a lot. I know people that have DONE it (for somewhat justifiable reason) and also those that have had it done TO them. It's the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction is all.
One friend of mine bought a coin listed as authentic. When it arrived, it was a reproduction. It was a fairly good looking repo, but an obvious copy none the less. The seller immediately agreed to a refund, it was obvious he knew he was listing fakes as genuine. Buyer was going to have to pay return
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I've already done returnless refunds on many items, I'm in the middle of one right now in fact.
I ordered a watch strap on Amazon, when I got it the clasp was broken, I contacted the seller, sent them a picture, and they gave me the choice of a refund or a new strap (in this case I took the new strap) At no point did they ask for the old one back because it's cheaper not to bother.
In several other cases my item never arrived, I notified the seller, and they refunded my money with no questions asked (If I was
Re: How can I use this return less refunds to get (Score:2, Insightful)
You buy an item that is so worthless that not even the seller wants it back. You then get to keep it for free and it's on you to dispose of it.
If you do this too many times, Amazon will close your account.
In other words, you can get a couple of cheap trinkets for "free", if you decide to game the system. And afterwards you might never be able to use any one of the many different Amazon services again.
It's a calculated risk for all parties involved
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And eventually, your family gets their Amazon accounts closed, too, for using the same IP address.
(They also track credit card numbers. How many credit cards do you have?)
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Live in a place from which return shipping would be prohibitively expensive.
Do note that no place is prohibitively expensive to be flagged in a database, though.
I had a bunch of cases where I'd end up with "doubles" of banged up books or DVDs cause someone forgot to put an extra air-pack in the box.
Basically, if you're ordering a birthday present, pay to have it gift-wrapped.
Hell... one time I got free cash cause I rushed to return the things I ordered.
Some hours after I've already sent the banged-up items